Balanced Platform

Perfectly Balanced Compute Architecture

The combination of Intel's Extended Memory 64 technology (EM64T), PCI Express and InfiniBand technology powered by Intel Xeon processors signals a new era in balanced computing that delivers a 300% bandwidth improvement. This dramatic increase in bandwidth compared to legacy PCI-X based machines is due to an optimized interaction among these technologies. Working together, EM64T, PCI Express and InfiniBand provide the foundation for a perfectly balanced server and cluster architecture for the data center and high performance computing environments. EM64T addresses the performance and scalability of 64 bit memory addressing, while Mellanox InfiniBand host channel adapters, using the PCI Express interface, offers optimized I/O performance with the scalability to distribute large data sets over many servers for parallel processing.

To understand how the integration of Xeon processors, EM64T and PCI Express InfiniBand HCAs delivers a balanced compute architecture, read:

InfiniBand, PCI Express, & EM64T Perfectly Balanced Computing Architecture - White Paper

Intel Xeon Processors

The Intel® Xeon™ Processor is designed for multi-processor server and workstation platforms, is now available at 3.60 GHz with 800 MHz system bus features technologies such as Hyper-Threading Technology, Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology, Demand Based Switching with Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology, and Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3).

Intel EM64T

Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology is an extension to Intel's processors based on the IA-32 architecture. The enhancement allows the processor to run newly written 64-bit code and access larger amounts of memory. While 32-bit Windows supports 4GB of physical memory, a 64-bit operating system can support up to 16 GB of memory. The increased memory means one can run more applications in physical memory and avoid paging to the slower hard disks and support larger number of users. This enhances performance because applications can store larger amount of data in memory, and results in improved data access.

PCI Express

PCI Express is the I/O technology with a packetized protocol and a load/store architecture. It is compatible with the current PCI software environment with an embedded clocking scheme that enables better frequency scaling. The technology features high bandwidth per pin, so it can be deployed in a variety of form factors for chip-to-chip and add-in card applications, while reducing cost, simplifying design and reducing signal integrity problems.

InfiniBand - Mellanox InfiniHost III Ex PCI Express Host Channel Adapter

The Mellanox InfiniHost III Ex, third generation 8x PCI Express InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter (HCA) stretches the PCI Express and InfiniBand links to their limits and delivers un-matched performance. The device offers the perfect balance of 20Gb/ s bandwidth between the dual InfiniBand ports and the 8x bandwidth of the PCI express interface.